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Culture
Buenos Aires lives and breathes a peculiarly cross-cultural approach to the arts: the patrician
families of the 19th century were determined to turn Buenos Aires into the Paris of South America
and encouraged all manifestations of European sensibility, from the imposing architecture of the
Palermo Chico and Recoleta mansions in the Louis XVI style, which includes the magnificent
National Museum of Decorative Art as well as the Colon Theatre, to all forms of artistic expression.
The wealthy invested in collecting classical, romantic and impressionist European art while
distinguished orchestral conductors, composers and soloists of the likes of Klemperer and Bohm,
Strauss and Stravinsky, Caruso and Callas delighted the bejeweled throngs of the immigrant
bourgeoisie to the strains of Verdi and Puccini. At the same time, local artists and musicians were
developing their own style, inspired by the social and geo-climatogolical features which were
helping to shape the nation. Scenes from the city and countryside, painted by artists such as Benito
Quinquela Martín whose oils of everyday life in the docklands of La Boca now fetch hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
Cultural City Tour
Buenos Aires today offers tourists and locals a broad choice of opportunities to enjoy its artistic and
cultural heritage; its 57 museums house permanent and visiting collections of classical and
contemporary art while the Colon Theatre is itself a living museum, displaying the costumes and
memorabilia of performances past and host to the world’s top orchestras, ballets, and opera
companies of the present. Begin your tour with a visit to the Colon Theatre before strolling round
the cool avenues of the historic Recoleta Cemetery, where the country’s founding fathers and
patrician families lie in style, including Eva Perón. The tour ends with a visit to the Fernández
Blanco Museum of Spanish American Art whose collection of colonial silverwork is today
considered to be one of the most representative and comprehensive in South America.
The Fernández Blanco Museum of Spanish American Art
Isaac Fernández Blanco, the descendent of an aristocratic Spanish family that arrived in Buenos
Aires in the 18th century from whose lineage sprang two governors of the province of Corrientes,
inherited a fortune which he turned to the acquisition of the colonial art treasures of the day. An
engineer by training, his passion for the violin led him to amass an exquisite collection of string
instruments now on display at the Colón.
In 1895 he began the task of collecting pieces which typified the contemporary culture of Latin
America, in particular the history of Argentine life. He gathered the silverwork, paintings,
furniture, books and documentation of his era and presented it at his house in the centre of town
which he opened to the public in 1922. Subsequently he bequeathed it to the Municipality of
Buenos Aires, which some years later in 1936 purchased the stately mansion of Carlos Noel, mayor
of the City of Buenos Aires and built by his brother Martín in the 1920s on Suipacha street.
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The Municipality converted the building into the Museum of Colonial Art, beginning with the
impressive collection of European art, tapestries and ceramics built up by the Noel family and
adding to it the Fernández Blanco collection in 1947. In 1963 the Museum received the donation of
the silver and art collection of Celina González Garaño, a family known for its interest in the
country’s artistic traditions, and in 1991, her brother Alfredo and his wife María Teresa Ayerza also
donated their collection of paintings to the Museum. The building is itself a monument to the
neocolonial style, a blend of Andalusian architecture with Peruvian details.
The Ibero-American collection is today considered to be one of the most representative and
comprehensive in Latin America; its selection of colonial silverwork boasts an astonishing selection
of pieces from Perú and the area of the River Plate, enhanced by a number of artworks dating from
the 18th and 19th century Alto Peruvian and Cuzcan schools as well as the decorative arts of the
Republican period.
The National Museum of Decorative Art
Declared an “artistic historical monument” in 1998, the museum is a magnificent neoclassical
residence built at the beginning of the 20th century by the French architect René Sergent who
worked with a select group of specialist European interior decorators craftsmen and landscape
gardeners, importing the finest examples of wood paneling, marble, wood and plaster molding for
their tasks from Europe.
The mansion is a fine example of the French eclecticism in vogue in Buenos Aires in the 1900s, with
its many reception rooms decorated in the style of different French periods, while the main hall is
clearly inspired on Tudor lines. The National Government created the National Museum of
Decorative Art in 1937 when it acquired the residence and the art collection of Josefina de Alvear,
descendant of one of the most distinguished families in Argentine cultural and ruling history,
married to the Chilean diplomat Matías Errázuriz. During Errázuriz’s many postings to Europe in
the early 1900s while their mansion in Buenos Aires was under construction, the couple built up an
impressive collection of European and Oriental artworks and antiquities which comprises a large
part of the collection to be seen today.
It includes over 4000 objects, from Roman sculptures to contemporary hand-crafted silverwork.
The great attraction is the selection of European miniatures, portraits and landscapes spanning 400
years from the 16th to the 20th century. Also worth noting are works by Corot, Manet, Rodin, Jacob
Cuyp and El Greco, as well as a beautiful collection of Sevres porcelain.
Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires - MALBA
Eduardo Constantini, entrepreneur and avid art collector, opened his museum in an airy and
luminous purpose-built structure in September 2001 with a display of over 200 works by 20 th
century modern and contemporary artists collected from all over Latin America. The permanent
collection includes works by Fernando Botero, Pedro Figari, Antonio Segui, Antonio Berni, Diego
Rivera and Frida Kahlo and is complemented by temporary exhibitions as well as a rich and varied
programme of talks, workshops and lectures given by local and visiting artists. The Constantini
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collection is considered to be one of the most important and paradigmatic assemblies of modern art
in the region.
Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires – MAMBA
The dream project of the renowned art critic Rafael Squirru, the museum opened its doors in 1956
with the aim of preserving and promoting primarily Argentine art of the 20 th century. It was
rehoused in 1989 in a disused tobacco factory in the district of San Telmo, a striking red brick
building built at the end of the 19th century whose spacious interior proved to be the perfect
location for the growing collection of artworks and sculptures.
The permanent collection contains an impressive selection of works by Argentine artists from the
1940s to the 1960s who have achieved international recognition. Among others are works by artists
from the Concrete Group and the Madí movement such as Gyula Kosice and Raúl Lozza; the
Informalists Alberto Greco and Rubén Santantonín; the Neofiguratives Jorge de la Vega and
Rómulo Macció; the Conceptuals Nicolas García Uriburu, Margarita Paksa and David Lamelas
without forgetting pieces by Sesostris Vitullo, Alberto Herecia and César Paternosto. These are
balanced by works by European artists of the same periods such as Matisse, Miró, Mondrian, Klee
and Kandinsky.
The collection is complemented by a rich and varied programme of temporary exhibitions of
Experimental Video and Digital Art presented by artists and experts on the subject which are aimed
particularly at capturing the interest of the younger generation. The museum is also developing a
film archive on the evolution of the design of image in movement and image in sound from the
1940s on. In 1999 the museum inaugurated its collection of Argentine photography, the first ever
dedicated to experimental photography as art which now displays over 300 works representative of
over half a century of output. The museum also boasts a collection of industrial design which plots
the history of Argentine industrial design in an international context.
The Colón Theatre
The most magnificent opera house in South America, the Colón Theatre rivals the acoustic and size
of La Scala in Milan and offers a musical and artistic history every bit as rich and colourful. The
first Colón theatre was inaugurated in 1857 for a performance of La Traviata on the corner of Plaza
de Mayo. It was unmatched for size and grandeur at the time, with a massive stage specially
constructed to meet any and all kinds of scenographic needs, lit by 450 gas lamps which included
an extraordinary central chandelier. Able to house an audience of 2500, its repertoire of music,
including German operas sung in Italian as was the custom at the time, was simply world-class.
This theatre closed its doors in 1888 to become the current headquarters of the Banco de la Nación
and was later rebuilt on its current site on an even grander scale in response to the imperious
demand of the ruling bourgeoisie which held opera, the supreme invention of late Renaissance
entertainment, in the highest regard. Although there were seven opera houses in Buenos Aires by
the end of the 1800s, the closure of the Colón on Plaza de Mayo left an open wound in the pride of
the porteños who regarded Buenos Aires as the world capital of lyrical expression. Technical and
budgetary difficulties beset the construction of the new opera house, whose exterior was designed
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by the Italian architect Francisco Tamburini in the Italian Renaissance style with the clear influence
of German and French baroque and hints of the neoclassical in the Corinthian and Ionic capitols to
the pillars of the building’s facade.
His untimely death was followed a few years later by the mysterious suicide of his successor and
thus the construction of the building fell into the hands of the eminent Belgian architect Jules
Dormal who promptly introduced some structural modifications and left his mark on the interior
decoration.
In 1925 the theatre began to offer performances with an entirely Argentine cast which ensured its
future. With a stable orchestra, ballet, choir, and children’s choir as well as the Philharmonic
Orchestra of Buenos Aires and the Academic Orchestra of the Colón, the theatre is admirably
supported with musical and artistic talent whatever the style and level of difficulty of the works it
presents. Notable dancers who are now household names abroad such as Julio Bocca, Paloma
Herrera and Maximiliano Guerra developed their skills with the Colón Ballet corps, while visiting
legends who have graced the boards include Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and Mijail
Barishnikov. The Philharmonic Orchestra has welcomed international star conductors such as
Herbert von Karajan, Sir Thomas Beecham, Daniel Barenboim and Zubin Mehta while renowned
soloists of stature including Martha Argerich, David Oistrakh, Itzhak Perlman and Placido
Domingo have held local audiences in rapture. Celebrated composers have also come to the Colón
theatre to conduct performances of their works; Richard Strauss, Arthur Honegger, Igor Stravinsky,
Camille Saint-Saens, Manuel de Falla and Aaron Copland.
The grand entrance and stairs are of Carrara marble as well as Portuguese and Belgian marble,
lined with sculptures and busts of famous composers such as Beethoven, Bizet, Mozart, Verdi and
Wagner. The striking stained glass vitraux were produced in Paris and depict scenes from classical
Greece.
The main salon with its horseshoe shape complies with the strictest standards of classic Italian and
French theatres and has gained an international reputation for the excellence of its acoustic. It can
seat up to 2478 spectators and a further 500 standing. The spectacular cupola was originally
painted by the French artist Marcel Jambon but the frescoes deteriorated badly due to damp in the
1930s and in the 1970s the Argentine artist Raúl Soldi was commissioned to depict a “gentle
polychrome ballet” representing theatrical life in its different forms. The 318 square metres of
ceiling show dancers, opera singers and Commedia dell’ Arte actors in the soft translucent hues
typical of the artist’s style.
The Colón has produced all of its own scenography and costumes since 1938 in workshops that lie
in the basement of the building and many of the costumes, wigs and scenery from past
performances may be viewed on special guided tours to the Colón.
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